Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

break your neck.” He paused. “Bad science, maybe, but personally gratifying. Come to think of it, you are looking a little green—around the gills.”

Bruce, using the wall for support, fought back to his feet. He continued to stare resolutely at Talbot, and he heard it then, the beginning of the rage within him, the desire to smash this little cockroach flat, to stomp on him and crush his body beneath his feet like packing peanuts. Smash smash echoed in his mind, and Not yet fired across the gulf of his neurons. His brain felt bifurcated, one half arguing with the other, but he kept himself together despite the best efforts of that growling inner voice to seize control.

“C’mon. Just a love tap,” said Talbot, thrusting out his chin, daring Bruce to take a swing at him. “Let’s see what you got.”

“Never,” Bruce said weakly. He tried to move and stumbled, the strength still gone from his legs, and Talbot—obviously displaying a confidence that Bruce knew to be misplaced—tossed aside the electric cane and pummeled Bruce with his fist. Bruce’s flesh shuddered and shook beneath the pounding, and he threw his arms up in front of his face and head, ultimately unable to accomplish anything defensively. Talbot stepped in through his guard and planted a right hook on Bruce’s chin and he went down. As the world darkened around him, he decided that perhaps he’d done too good a job of suppressing his angrier half, because this strategy hadn’t worked out exactly the way he’d hoped.

Then again, at least he was alive, so hey, major points for Bruce, and Mom, can I have some ice cream? I promise I’ll do all my homework, and then he teetered on the edge of insensibility.

From very far away, he heard Glen Talbot mutter, “You know, consciously you might control it. But subconsciously I bet that’s another story.” And Bruce, from his place on the edge, could almost sense the creature within, watching him but constrained by the constant rationality, the morality, the upper brain functions—in short, the superego of Bruce Banner. But if Bruce was out of the equation, then that opened up possibilities, which was obviously what Talbot was hoping.

“Anybody home?” he inquired, right before kicking Bruce’s crumpled body.

The door opened and Thunderbolt Ross barged in with the sort of unexpected arrival that suited his nickname. “Talbot, that’s enough!”

“All in the name of science, sir,” Talbot said with a shrug. He moved back and walked out of the room past Ross. Ross followed him out, and as he did so, Bruce Banner opened an eye and watched them leave.

One for you, Talbot, he thought, pain wracking his body, but a war isn’t won with one battle. Don’t have to be a soldier . . . to know that. . . .

And then he was out cold.

In one of the lab facilities at the base, Thunderbolt Ross was expressing his personal annoyance to Glen Talbot who, in turn, didn’t give much of a damn just how worked up Ross was. Workers went on about their business, making a great attempt to pay no attention.

“What I’m saying is deliberately provoking an incident is my business,” Ross told him flatly.

“I’ve got every kind of active denial system in place,” said Talbot, sounding rather bored with what he obviously saw as an unwarranted interrogation. “We will contain or neutralize according to procedures.” Then he folded his arms and looked like the most smug SOB in the world as he addressed his former commanding officer with barely restrained condescension.

“The fact is unless we get this thing in vivo, we have little or nothing to build on. The secret’s in him and I’m going to extract it.” As an afterthought, he added, “Sir.” Then he raised an eyebrow, daring Ross to say something else, to try to continue the argument.

Ross stood there for a moment, his mustache bristling, and then he turned on his heel and left. Talbot watched him go and almost had to chuckle. To think that he had once held Thunderbolt Ross in such high esteem. Hell, he’d practically worshiped the man. And now look where the two of them were. Ross seemed so . . . so small in comparison to Talbot’s recollections. To Talbot it was a distinct reminder of the danger of putting people on pedestals.

He waited another minute or so to make sure that Ross wasn’t on the other side of the door, preparing to sandbag him or come at him with some other inane argument. Then one of the Atheon workers caught Talbot’s eye, and he turned.

“Subject is in the tank, sir,” he told Talbot.

Talbot nodded once and then headed out the door. Ross was nowhere around, thankfully. As he headed down to the immersion lab, he could only guess at the personal agonies Betty must be enduring, yanked away from her favorite experiment and boy toy.

Still, the fly in the ointment was Banner. Not only had he resisted the pounding Talbot had given him, but he had made some annoyingly accurate guesses about Atheon’s true nature. Talbot was going to have to have a talk with his superiors, to discuss ways in which Atheon and its parent organization could tighten things up so no one else would be able to put two and two together.

As he considered the possibilities, he entered the immersion lab. There, deprived of sensory input, wired up to so many machines he looked like a Christmas tree, was Bruce Banner.

Talbot smiled, went over to the monitors to study the readouts, and called, “Let’s fire up those brain waves, shall we?”

Electrical probes shot into Bruce’s body, stimulating specific centers of his brain, trying to jolt a reaction from him. His body twitched slightly.

Start small, Glen, Talbot reminded himself. Don’t want to use a sledgehammer to pound a flea, not before we’ve got the big dog in our sights.

Betty wasn’t at all surprised when the van that had dropped her off at her house parked